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Here is another one for you. We hit our chiropractor today [how he LOVES to crack the neck - his biggest thrill] and in the waitingroom I opened Scientific American. Last I saw it was a fairly decent magazine - though some of the research thew published was hokey - about 3/8 inch thick. Today it was barely 1/4 inch, slick and glossy. Little in there that interesting - but at the end I found this > http://www.michaelshermer.com/2014/03/the-awe-delusion/ <

Shermer it seems is another once Christian who got talked out of it into what he is not quite willing to label antagonistic atheism, though he is happy to debunk what comes along, be it Bigfoot or the virgin birth.

I quite agree with him that the Oprah statement he cites is dumb and otherwise objectionable. But the rest - the quoted research and conclusions thefrom remind me of the guy who claimed religion is just the outcome of an evolutionary split of humanity into sheep who follow leaders and buy into religions and goats [or wolves?] who instead of that trait have clear vison and a propensity to exploit the sheep.

That ending! Priceless. I am either speechless or I rant.

And how will he resond when Oprah says, ah, see, natural law is your god.?

The truth, the stark naked truth, the truth without so much as a loincloth on, should surely be the investigator's sole aim - Basil Chamberlain

jochanaan wrote:How can we be in awe, except at something greater than ourselves?

Well, I suppose we could be awestruck by someone's utter ineptness or stupidity........ And hopefully we ourselves are not less inept or less intelligent. ..... Not that we would likely admit it if we were.

Personally, I distnguish in awe [very rare as a response to human activity or verbiage], dumbfounded [frequent as a response to unexpected human activity or verbiage] and aghast [all too common as a response to anticipated human ctivity or verbiage, including some of my own.

Examples: I realize that our home here fulfills a promise from on high made perhaps ten years earlier > awe.

I watch a department staffer just stand there after squirting duplicator fluid in her eyes - dumbfounded.

I find a different staffer in a different department left town without sendinng in the payroll - aghast.

The truth, the stark naked truth, the truth without so much as a loincloth on, should surely be the investigator's sole aim - Basil Chamberlain